OSLO (Reuters) - India's Rajendra Pachauri said on Monday
he will probably seek a new term as head of the U.N. climate
panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S.
Vice President Al Gore.

"I think we are riding a crest ... as far as climate change
is concerned, particularly spreading the information of climate
change," Pachauri, 67, told Reuters in Oslo after making an
evening speech about the risks of global warming.

"I feel that even though it's going to be very tough ... I
will probably throw my hat in," he said when asked if he would
seek re-election in April for a second six-year term as head of
the U.N. panel that draws on the work of about 2,500
scientists.

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"I am tending towards that ... I feel that I should decide
formally in the next couple of weeks," he said of the election
to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"But I need to consult a few other people," he added. The
IPCC produced mammoth reports about climate change in 2007 and
before that in 2001 and 1995.

The IPCC's warnings last year of ever more droughts,
floods, heatwaves, and rising seas brought pressure in many
nations for tougher long-term action to slow climate change.

Pachauri was elected as chair of the IPCC in a 76-49 vote
in April 2002, with the backing of U.S. President George W.
Bush, over the former IPCC head, U.S. scientist Robert Watson.

Gore at the time criticized Pachauri as the 'let's drag our
feet candidate' who would get little done.

Gore has since apologized for his criticisms of Pachauri --
the IPCC's 2007 reports bluntly said that human activities, led
by burning fossil fuels, were warming the planet and that
governments should act quickly to avert the worst damage.

BALI DEAL

About 190 nations agreed in Bali, Indonesia, last month to
launch two years of talks on a global treaty to succeed the
Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 rich nations to curb greenhouse
gas emissions by 2012. The United States is the only developed
nation outside Kyoto and developing nations have no 2012 curbs.

Pachauri collected the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on
December 10 on behalf of the IPCC, which shared the award with
Gore for his role in raising awareness of climate change with
his movie "An Inconvenient Truth."

Pachauri said costs of curbing climate change, mainly by
shifting from fossil fuels, need not be high. Bush rejected
Kyoto in 2001, saying it would cost too much and wrongly
excluded developing nations.

In his six years as chair of the IPCC, Pachauri said that
he had focused on the broad challenge of building up government
confidence and raising public awareness of climate change,
rather than getting involved in the scientific detail.